Tinkers
By Paul Harding
(Bellevue Literary Press, Hardcover, 9781934137192, 192pp.)
Publication Date: January 2009
Other Editions of This Title: Paperback, Paperback
Categories: Literary
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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the January 2009 Indie Next List“This compact, adamantine début dips in and out of the consciousness of a New England patriarch named George Washington Crosby as he lies dying on a hospital bed in his living room, ‘right where they put the dining room table, fitted with its two extra leaves for holiday dinners’…In Harding’s skillful evocation, Crosby’s life, seen from its final moments, becomes a mosaic of memories, ‘showing him a different self every time he tried to make an assessment.’”—The New Yorker
“Harding’s interest is in the universalities: nature and time and the murky character of memory…The small, important recollections are rendered with an exactitude that is poetic…Harding's prose is lyrical and specific...Tinkers is a poignant exploration of where we may journey when the clock has barely a tick or two left and we really can’t go anywhere at all.”—The Boston Globe
“Tinkers is truly remarkable… It confers on the reader the best privilege fiction can afford, the illusion of ghostly proximity to other human souls.”—Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Home and Gilead
“In astounding language sometimes seemingly struck by lightning, sometimes as tight and complicated as clockwork, Harding shows how enormous fiction can be, and how economical. Read this book and marvel.”—Elizabeth McCracken, author of Niagara Falls All Over Again
“Tinkers is a remarkable piece of work…fascinating—and sometimes horrific—to read, and is cumulatively moving because it is woven together into the single quilt of our humanity.”—Barry Unsworth, Booker Prize–winning author of The Ruby in Her Navel
An old man lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature.
Paul Harding has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing at Harvard. He lives in Georgetown, Massachusetts.
Paul Harding has an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop (2000) and was a 2000-2001 Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, in Provincetown, MA. He has published short stories in Shakepainter and the Harvard Review. Paul currently teaches creative writing at Harvard. This is his first novel.
Paul Harding's publisher, the tiny Bellevue Literary Press, published only a few thousand copies of his first novel, Tinkers. Expectations were low. Then it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. More at NPR.org
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This book is on these lists:
Zimmer50's Wish List by zimmer50Clo171's Wish List by clo171
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